The Center, founded in 1985, is an environmental organization dedicated to protecting the environment, enhancing human, animal and plant ecologies, promoting the efficient use of natural resources and expanding participation in the environmental movement.

Thank you for all your hard work to secure action on energy and climate change. We strongly believe that any successful comprehensive energy and climate change legislation must include forests and farms as a significant part of the solution. By providing anaffordable means to address climate change, public and private incentives (such as offsets) for forests and farms can help Americans save money while leading the way to a low carbon economy.

American agriculture can play a major role in sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Providing strong incentives to American farms and ranches can help feed and fuel the world and do it in a way that involves American agriculture in the energy and climate solution – while bringing increased prosperity to rural America.

American forests, including working forests and wood, already sequester about one eighth of U.S. carbon emissions, with the potential for much more. Strong incentives for reforestation, sustainable forest management, and forest conservation will create jobs and safeguard America’s energy future.

Conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of tropical forests must also play asignificant role. By providing public and private incentives for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation activities (REDD), we can address the 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions that come from tropical deforestation while helping keep energy costs affordable for U.S. agriculture, forest products industries, and consumers. Protecting these forests will also help level the playing field for U.S. agriculture and forest products industries by reducing illegal logging and forest conversion in tropical countries, ensuring fair competition in wood, pulp, beef, leather, soybeans, and other global markets.

We look forward to working with you to ensure that forests, farms and ranches help deliver an effective and affordable solution to climate change and a new energy future.